


take your time and think about it, baby (i've learned how to wait)

by zauberer_sirin



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Angst, Don't Touch Lola, F/M, First Kiss, Hopeful Ending, Romance, Working Out My Feelings Through Fic, post 4x04
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-01
Updated: 2016-11-01
Packaged: 2018-08-28 10:09:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,471
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8441599
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/zauberer_sirin/pseuds/zauberer_sirin
Summary: Daisy leaves again.
This time Coulson gives her a ride.





	

**Author's Note:**

  * For [hamsterfactor](https://archiveofourown.org/users/hamsterfactor/gifts).



The silence during the ride is alternatively uncomfortable and not.

That’s almost familiar, because Coulson’s silences have always come easy to her (she is never _completely_ relaxed with him, but she is relaxed in ways she can’t be with the rest of the world), but there’s still an underlying tension. Now there should be more of that than ever, yet it feels like driving through the streets of LA with him is keeping her in a bubble where she doesn’t have to think about what’s happening: about how she is leaving the team again, about how she is going to be on her own again. The last few days were rife with anxiety, being around the people she loved meant that they could be at risk, pushing them away took all her energy. But it has also been comforting in a way, the noises of people, the proximity of people, even when she had to hide away in a corner, Daisy knew that around her were people who knew her, their voices, their concern (their anger and their pain, too, but Daisy wanted those as well). And she hadn’t felt that in such a long time.

She hadn’t expected to ride in Lola ever again, and she wanted to reject Coulson’s offer of driving her to her van when she decided to leave, but she couldn’t help it, she wanted to ride this gorgeous car again, specially if it’s some kind of goodbye, because she didn’t get to say many goodbyes last time, she was in no state of mind to. She feels grateful to just have this moment: the sun is low, the streets of East LA look pretty empty right here, Coulson drives fast (he always drives fast) and he is keeping quiet, letting her be and enjoy the ride. It feels good, like very things have felt in the last seven months.

It’s too brief. 

Daisy had wanted to imagine they could go on like this for hours, but the truth is the spot where she left her van was pretty close by.

“Here,” she signals Coulson and he turns a corner into a residential street. He seems surprised that she parked here and she is about to make a joke about how she just had to fake a neighbor’s permit. But she stops herself before she starts talking.

Coulson stops the car some distance from the van, up the street.

“So here we are,” he says.

“Here we are,” Daisy repeats, her heart oddly breaking because the ride is over.

“Nice van,” Coulson says. Daisy drops her head for a moment, because he probably knows she paid for it with money she stole. From Hydra and the Watchdogs, sure, but still, _stolen_. “Very retro.”

Daisy gives Lola a pointed look that doesn’t escape him.

He smiles.

“I know,” he concedes. “I guess we have that in common.”

“Yeah,” she says, half-heartedly.

She knows she has to move and just leave. She thinks about how Robbie is now with his family and she feels happy for him, and glad she could help, that she did some good. But it makes her feel more lonely.

Daisy clutches the bag with her laptop to her chest.

“I’ve got something else for you,” Coulson says.

“What?”

“I packed some of the latest tech the Strike team has been using,” he tells her, handing her the other bag, a smaller one he kept on the floor behind his seat. Daisy opens it and sees the bottles of pills first. “I got you some more bone medicine.”

She looks at him, not knowing what to say. Coulson had been entirely silent on the subject of Daisy stealing drugs from SHIELD, and she kept expecting him to bring it up and be angry about it. He doesn’t seem angry.

“If you run out of them, just let us know,” he adds. “I’ll let Elena handle it, if you’d rather not make contact directly.”

She nods.

He is making this so easy. The parts that he can make easier. But his attitude is only making the actual leaving harder.

Yet he only lets go of the handle of the bag with some reticence, the fingers lingering as Daisy takes it from him. She looks up and he’s looking at her quite seriously. Like he is troubled - but not like it’s her fault. At least that’s not the vibe she gets.

“Daisy?”

“Yeah?” She still has trouble recognizing her own name in familiar voices, after so many months in which she could only remember or imagine or recreate.

“Tell me, I trust your judgement,” Coulson starts. “Am I doing the right thing here?”

She knows what he means. Leaving it all to him. She knows Coulson, he’s probably frustrated he can’t do more to help her.

“You are,” she tells him. “It’s my call, after all.”

“Yes, it is.”

He looks unconvinced. Daisy aches at the idea that he thinks it’s his fault that she doesn’t stay. Though, _knowing Coulson_ , that’s probably exactly what he is thinking. They haven’t spoken about this at all -just the technical side of leaving. She wonders if Coulson knows why she walked away in the first place, why she stayed away. She suspects he does but no words have been spoken between them. Not even when he offered to give her a ride to her van, when she was about to just slip away from the base.

They haven’t even talked about how he knew she was leaving again. 

“Thank you, again. Thanks for… letting me go.”

“You don’t have to thank me for that,” Coulson tells her. “I don’t want to be the thing that keeps you where you don’t want to be.”

He’s wrong. She wants to be there. She wants to be in SHIELD, with the team, and with him. She wants it so much it burns her. But she can’t. Not right now. She used to think she could _never_ come back, but seeing him again has made that resolve falter. She’s not sure she can get it back again. Coulson has ruined those careful plans, just like once upon a time he ruined her plan of infiltrating SHIELD, cleanly, get the file about her parents, and leave. He keeps doing that.

Daisy admits they have run out of time today, and she should get going before Coulson becomes aware of how much she doesn’t want to go.

“I guess I have to-”

“Can you wait a moment?” he says.

Daisy nods, wondering about the sudden change of mood.

Coulson is looking forward, down the street, looking lost in concentration. She fears that he is going to ask her to stay, after all.

“Is there something wrong?”

He turns to her.

“No, it’s nothing, it’s…”

He leans over and Daisy thinks he is just going to open the passenger door for her, for some reason. But that’s not it.

He leans over and presses his mouth to hers. Daisy’s mouth makes a surprised “oh” shape because…

Well, because she spent months picturing what Coulson would do and say if they met again. She had imagined him angry and disappointed, saying hurtful words like those of Fitz or Mack, or disapproving words like Simmons or May had spoken. She had also imagined him telling her she couldn’t come back to the team after what she had done. It was a stupid idea, but Daisy imagined all sort of ugly, self-punishing possibilities. She imagined Coulson hunting her down like the threat she was, while in reality he was always one step behind her, always miraculously too late, until Daisy wised up about what was going on. Sometimes, when she was in a particular bad place, she imagined Coulson saying kind words, the kind she knows he can say, the kind of words that take the pain away while breaking your heart, Coulson is good at that. She imagined him wrapping his arms around him and holding her, convincing her none of this is her fault, and in fantasies Daisy could afford to believe it, a bit.

For months she imagined all sorts of scenarios, but she never imagined Coulson kissing her.

She kisses back, instinctively, wrapping her fingers around his nape while Coulson parts her lips with his tongue, gently but in a way that you could never mistake his intention for a chaste peck or an accident.

Daisy doesn’t know how to describe it but it reminds her of the first time she used her powers without destroying anything, because it’s not like there’s something new inside her, but something that’s been there for a while, and only now she can understand it, or maybe she was too afraid to try. Coulson grabs her arm, pulling her closer to his body. They’re in the middle of the street, inside _Lola_ (Daisy feels irrationally guilty about the setting, but the warmth in her cheeks when she thinks about it feels nice), yet this is the closest thing to intimacy with another person Daisy has felt in many months. She didn’t know how much she has been missing it.

And she feels silly for not having thought about this before. She loves Coulson, more than she’s loved anyone in her life - she just didn’t think it was that kind of love.

She doesn’t just feel loved right now, she also feels desired. She thought those feelings were mutually exclusive when it came to her. Something changes when Coulson touches his tongue to the roof of her mouth, making her toes curl like a teenager, making her imagine a lot of stuff she never fantasized about during those months of solitude, it definitely goes beyond Coulson hugging her. He’s still holding her in his hands, light, trembling touches. Loved and desired and desiring and this complicates things a lot, yet in a way it also clears things up. Again Coulson has ruined her plans. Like he knew she wanted them ruined in the first place.

He pulls back and Daisy lets out a moan of protest when their lips stop touching, even if Coulson is not moving, and continues brushing his nose against the lines on her cheek and mouth, brushing his lips lightly against her chin.

“You said you’d let me go…” Daisy whispers, stroking the underside of his chin. She can’t help it, now that this door is open she wants more.

“That wasn’t to make you stay,” Coulson tells her. “It was to remind you can always come back.”

I will, she thinks. Someday. She can’t make that promise to Coulson yet, only to herself, in a tiny voice, but one she hasn’t heard before. She likes it, that voice.

She kisses him again, starting it this time. She doesn’t want one little kiss to be the only memory for god knows how long they’ll stay apart. Coulson opens his mouth a bit in surprise, when she presses her lips against him, not expecting her to take the initiative.

She realizes they are kissing not just inside Lola, they are kissing in a vintage red convertible, like some kind of cliché. She decides these things are a cliché with good reason.

For a moment she wants to forget all the hurt and the guilt and the fucking exhausting sadness she feels, and just grab Coulson and go with him to the back of her van and just have a moment where things can stop being hard and painful, a moment that feels good instead. She realizes this is the first time since Hive, since everything went wrong, when she has really wanted to stop feeling like she does. When she has truly wanted to be okay and maybe a bit happy. It changes everything.

“I want to…” she mutters against Coulson’s mouth, her leg half draped over his lap (she’s not sure when that happened, but it already feels good).

“I know,” Coulson replies, his voice strange and, well, Daisy would say _husky_ but the word makes her smile against Coulson’s lips.

“But I can’t…right now I...”

“I know,” he tells her, still kissing her.

She knows she could have it, that one moment that feels good, she knows Coulson would give it to her, that he would give her anything (she has always known that, and while occasionally it has felt like a burden, it doesn’t right now), and it would stop the pain and the sadness. But, for the first time since Hive, since everything, Daisy is thinking about the future.

When she pulls away Coulson’s face is flushed in a way that makes her almost not recognize him.

“I have to go,” she tells him.

He has one hand loosely wrapped around Daisy’s elbow and he nods and let her go.

“I know,” he says. 

Even if it’s a lie, even if he doesn’t understand why she has to leave, now of all times, it’s nice of him to say. Better than nice, it’s kind. That’s all she wants right now kindness. Maybe others wouldn’t think that’s super exciting, but Daisy doesn’t agree.

She gets out of Lola, and Coulson hands her the bags again, over the door. She looks around for a moment, but the street is still as empty as when they arrived, as if the neighbors were unwittingly giving her and Coulson some privacy. Her whole body feels full of this new electricity, and she wonders, embarrassingly, she’s not fifteen, if her knees will hold up.

She doesn’t know what to say and now that she is out of the car she guesses she can’t postpone their parting by kissing him some more. Though it’s tempting to try.

She still feels like she hasn’t told him enough times, how much she appreciates what he’s done, how he’s acted this last couple of days. But it’s hard to think about anything other than the last few _minutes_.

“Thank you for the ride and… the other thing,” she manages to say.

Coulson shakes his head slightly.

“Anytime.”

She arches an eyebrow.

“Anytime _both_?”

His eyes soften.

“Yes, Daisy. Anytime both.”

She smiles like an idiot, but Coulson knows her, he probably understand why she needs confirmation.

“I might take you up on the offer,” she says.

“I hope you do.”

She chuckles. They’re just dragging this out now.

“We are very bad at saying goodbye,” she tells him.

Coulson agrees, nodding. 

“We always have been,” he says.

Now with more reason than ever, Daisy thinks.

She touches her fingertips to the door to Lola’s passenger seat one more time, before stepping back.

“Okay,” she says.

“Okay,” Coulson replies.

She walks down the street towards her van.

She turns around and looks back a couple of times (okay, maybe _three_ times). Just to check if Coulson is still watching her leave.

He is.


End file.
